Our History
Eukarÿs is a biotechnology company whose mission is to develop therapeutic and non-therapeutic products and applications derived from its C3P3 technology, an artificial system invented and developed by Eukarÿs and to the point of making it a powerful system of expression in eukaryotic systems.
Until the early 2010s, the development of an artificial eukaryotic expression system was virtually impossible due to the extreme complexity of post-transcriptional modifications of eukaryotic mRNA, knowledge of which has increased in recent years.
The emergence of synthetic biology has radically changed this state of affairs, allowing the design and then the optimization of the C3P3 expression system (acronym for “cytoplasmic capping capping prone phage polymerase”). This system, the first and only one ever developed, allows the high-yield production of the messenger RNA(s) of interest (mRNA) in the cytoplasm of the host cell and therefore of the corresponding proteins.
The mRNA of eukaryotes, and even more that of mammals, is characterized by the existence of many post-transcriptional modifications that are critical to the translation of mRNA, its stability, the regulation of the innate immune response, etc. The C3P3 system has been evolved from the prototype stage to its current generation whose performance is excellent in humans by allowing the system to carry out an increasing number of post-transcriptional modifications. This latest generation is used both for our bioproduction tools and for our immunotherapy platform.
Our first molecular tools for bioproduction were dedicated to the production of conventional viruses (rotavirus, orthoreovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, etc.) with significantly increased production yields.
Our first molecular tools for bioproduction were dedicated to the production of conventional viruses (rotavirus, orthoreovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, etc.) with significantly increased production yields. More recently, we have successfully adapted the C3P3 system to the production of recombinant lentiviruses and plan to adapt this tool to the production of AAV (adeno-associated virus) in the near future. This system is currently available to academic and private partners under license agreement. We also aim to adapt our products to the production of recombinant proteins, in particular conventional and complex monoclonal antibodies.
The Covid-19/SARS-Cov2 pandemic had the effect of revealing to the general public the therapeutic potential of synthetic mRNA for its vaccine applications. Paradoxically, this crisis has also highlighted the limits of synthetic mRNA in terms of thermal stability, its instability in biological media for systemic use, its often poor tolerance and its high production costs. Eukarÿs is therefore developing a radically innovative immunotherapy platform using the C3P3 system and based on the administration of specifically designated DNA, which aims to provide an effective therapeutic solution We aim to test this therapeutic platform in animals in 2023 for its two main therapeutic applications: prophylactic vaccination against infectious diseases and the curative treatment of solid cancers.